


courting swans

by leaveanote



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e04 Of Banquets Bastards and Burials, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Marking, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, jaskier is possessive in this episode and geralt secretly adores it, or something close to it, the inherent homoeroticism of wearing his clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29051337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaveanote/pseuds/leaveanote
Summary: After the bath, Jaskier dresses Geralt for the betrothal banquet. The doublet doesn't quite fit, so they're in need of a chemise to go beneath.Jaskier offers his own.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 7
Kudos: 161





	courting swans

**Author's Note:**

> because we briefly thought geralt might be wearing jaskier’s chemise from the bath to the banquet, and it turns out [it is technically not but](https://violentcrumbles.tumblr.com/post/641493931126931456/although-costuming-is-not-my-main-area-of) it’s so close i’m letting myself stay convinced it’s one of jaskier’s. whether or not that’s true, i offer, what if it is

“Bollocks.” Jaskier tugs the sides of the doublet together valiantly, but it is obvious they are simply not going to meet and allow him to button Geralt into this stupid monstrosity. A strip of Geralt’s front remains obstinately bare, and Geralt grins, flashing his teeth.

“Looks like I won’t be joining you after all.”

Jaskier thinks on it a moment, his considering gaze raking Geralt up and down, tongue prodded between his lips in thought. Geralt rolls his eyes, moving to remove the doublet, but then Jaskier’s face lights up.

“Nope! We just need a viable chemise to go underneath.”

And before Geralt can protest, Jaskier’s pulling his own over his head, uncovering the soft, familiar down of his chest beneath.

“Here we go,” Jaskier says happily, shrugging off Geralt’s doublet, “and we’ll just—get this—come on—” 

His chemise refuses to go over Geralt’s shoulders, though horribly, that does  _ not  _ stop him trying. Which means he is struggling to work the soft fabric over Geralt’s head and arms, trapping Geralt in folds still warm from Jaskier’s body, his sweat and his scent suddenly pressed against Geralt’s senses just as Jaskier’s own bare torso is inches from his own. He makes little noises of effort, and Geralt’s cheeks go very, very warm.

“Fuck off,” Geralt growls, shoving him off and trying to keep a note of panic out of his voice. Surely,  _ surely  _ this must be the end of it, but Jaskier just clicks his tongue and glances about.

“I’ve got a bit of a bigger one in my pack, just a moment, the one I wear to sleep—”

Thankfully, Jaskier’s scampered off to get it, and doesn’t notice Geralt’s eyes turn heavenward at that. 

“All right,” Jaskier says, returning with what unfortunately seems to be an appropriate chemise. They’re nearly the same size, after all. It is indeed the one he sleeps in. Geralt would recognize it anywhere. It’s got fewer frills than the one now puddled on the floor, but it’s still unmistakably  _ Jaskier’s.  _

He snatches it out of Jaskier’s hands before the bard repeats the torture of dressing him while half-clad himself. 

Fuck. It fits.

“Well,” Jaskier sighs, beaming at him, taking it in. “There we are  _ indeed!  _ Aren’t you handsome?” He arranges Geralt’s hair as Geralt tugs on the stupid doublet, smoothing it over his shoulders. Jaskier washed it clean in the bath, coaxed the tangles free and pulled it back just as he knows Geralt prefers, and now he’s smoothing it over this fancy doublet he bought for Geralt. 

Geralt’s so clean he can hardly recognize his own scent, free as it is from filth and blood. Instead, there’s the strange one of the new doublet, the chamomile from the bath, and...Jaskier. Not just Jaskier, before him, arranging the clothes and fussing over Geralt’s hair, but Jaskier’s scent where it’s seeped into the soft shirt now pressed to Geralt’s chest. Where it’s sweeter and muskier at once from sleep, where he lays in it defenseless, yet protected, in Geralt’s presence.

Jaskier grins, and goes to do up his own outfit, a prissy gilded thing that makes him look, Geralt thinks in vague annoyance, like a prince. Geralt watches him, fingers playing over his own new clothes. They are more comfortable than he expected, though he’ll never admit it. 

Perhaps it’s less about the clothes themselves and more about being tended to, though he’ll admit that even  _ less.  _

And then he realizes two things in quick succession. 

When Geralt gives this shirt back to Jaskier to sleep in tonight, it will smell like Geralt.

When Geralt gives this shirt back to Jaskier tonight, he will smell like Jaskier.

Geralt groans inwardly, and does his very best not to think about why the notion makes his belly heat in a not unpleasant, not unfamiliar sensation.

He might be well and truly fucked.

“Hurry up, bard,” Geralt snarls. “Enough preening.” He’s pretty enough as is anyway. 

“In a minute, darling!” Jaskier admonishes, adjusting his own hair. “You don’t want to show up with someone looking unkempt, do you?”

Geralt snorts, and hopes it comes out derisive. It’s not. Nothing about Jaskier is unkempt. And when it is, it’s still infuriatingly handsome. He wears unkempt well. He wears everything fucking well. 

Geralt studies the hem of his own doublet closer as he waits.

His eyes widen in disbelief.

_ “Buttercups,  _ Jaskier?” He strides over to him, holding out the fabric. “You commissioned a doublet for me with  _ buttercups?” _

And if he didn’t know better, he’d say the bard  _ blushed. _

“Ah, well,” Jaskier catches that plush lower lip in his teeth, and grins. “Thought it would suit you.” His eyes rove Geralt again, Geralt in his sleep shirt and the doublet he’s bought with his own name emblazoned all over it, Geralt’s who’s bathed and cleaned and combed just for him,  _ by  _ him. Geralt who’s now wearing an outfit that could not, he now realizes, scream any more loudly exactly who it is to whom he belongs. “It does, doesn’t it?”

And Geralt...cannot argue. 

Well and truly fucked indeed.

“Come on,” he growls. “Take me to your damned party.”

Jaskier doesn’t even bother to hide his smile as he straps on his lute, and does just that.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ [welcomemysentence](https://welcomemysentence.tumblr.com/)


End file.
